


Teamwork

by lilyconrad



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 18:53:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7450303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyconrad/pseuds/lilyconrad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Padme Amidala, Junior Chancellor of the New Republic, is about to get engaged when an unexpected guest crashes the party. Will the engagement survive? Will she?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Teamwork

It was a lovely, sunny day above the vast sea of metal and glass that was Coruscant, the blue sky laced with light clouds above and the long, glinting lines of lower-clearance air traffic below. Here, high up enough the rumble of the city was soft, quiet enough it had to compete with the rustle of Padme Amidala’s ornate skirts as she stood at the railing of a large pleasure barge, eyes closed and enjoying the cool air on her face.

“Hello, my dear Junior Chancellor,” a young man whispered, wrapping his arms around her from behind. He was a few years older than the young woman, both of them dressed in white and bearing the fine features of nobility. “Such a dry name for such a beautiful woman.” They made a perfect picture: the azure sky behind them, the pale waves of city below.

“You could call me Daughter. That’s what they all do,” she teased, eyes bright and waving toward the endless city far below. “But that might sound a little strange!”

He listened to Padme’s innocent laugh as he took in the gentle curve of her body hinted at under the layers of ivory and gold, the long waves of hair that begged to be touched, and her large, expressive eyes. “You are perfect, you know.”

“So I’m still worth getting engaged to, my prince?” She leaned back against him, smiling as he reached up to play with one of her hair ornaments. The tiny gold bells jingled faintly, the sun sparkling on them.

“Of course! I only wish you would allow us a more lavish celebration.” He gestured to the barge around them as they turned back away from the sights below: white pennants and golden flags trailed from every pole, railing, and raised surface his servants had been able to find. “All of my family is here to welcome you into our clan.”

“And the next party will be mine and my friends. Two parties sound lovely, don’t they?”

The handsome prince nodded, pleased with himself and life in general. He looked around at the fresh flowers in a million bright, perfumed colors that sat piled in containers and draped along the outdoor paths around the ship. There was even a gazebo that he’d ordered constructed in the middle of the deck, elegant lines of metal draped in long transparent washes of gauze. “If I had known all it took was a treaty with the Republic to make you my bride, this would have happened months ago!”

“Oh, don’t say it like that, Karal.” Padme wrinkled up her nose and shook her head, patting his arm as they turned to stroll along the bow. “I don’t know about any of that. That is the Father’s, sorry, Chancellor’s field, not mine, and I tell you I never know what that man is thinking.”

She patted one of the golden lilies worked into her hair, delicate hand pale against the dark braids. “I just wanted to be with you from the moment I saw you at that party this winter. The Chancellor said this would be the best way to stop people from saying it was just two young people being foolish.” She sighed and gave him a loving kiss on his cheek. “What was the treaty about?”

“Refueling stations for the Republic,” he explained, choosing simple words. “But don’t trouble yourself with any of that, my sweet one. It’s been signed and Republic mining ships are on the way. Nothing will interrupt us today.”

She nodded, patting his arm and then pointing to the gazebo. “Is that where the engagement ceremony will be?” she asked, smiling and nodding to guests as they passed.

“Yes, it’s a tradition of the Hsach. All vows must be made in front of one’s entire family so that the family may join in the honor of them, and all vows must be made under a blue sky, so that the ancestors too may know the truth of them.”

“What about vows made at night?” she wondered, the question so innocent the prince had to momentarily concentrate on a plate of sugared fruit lifted in front of him until he felt calm again.

“Those are best left for another time, I think,” he grinned, popping a small slice into his mouth. “You know--”

Someone screamed. It drifted back to them from far down on the other end of the barge, out of place with the banners and the flowers and the well-dressed people milling all around them.

“What was that?” he asked, looking back at her. She gave a puzzled shrug, holding his arm tighter, and he strained to peer above the ornate hairstyles of the men and women in front of them.

More screams followed: panicked, high-pitched cries that set Karal’s teeth on edge with fear. “Did someone fall?” Padme whispered to him, taking a step forward.

“Move! Out of the way!” Men in armor came from all directions to rush past, boots pounding flowers into broken puddles of color as they shoved their way through the crowd.

“My personal guard,” Karal murmured to her, distracted and clearly worried. “Trained since the age of five. If there is a problem they will handle it.” He started to pull her in the opposite direction of the commotion, toward the back of the ship. “See, there’s Gadane now. He’s the captain.”

Gadane, First of the House of the Lightningborn, Guardians of the Sacred Crown of Hsach, did not see the prince pointing at him as he jogged by. He was tall and intimidating in the pale armor of his rank, the only touch of color a blue sash to mark today’s happy occasion. The captain ran ahead of the retreating crowd toward the source of the screams, a staff in one hand and blaster within reach on his hip.

Racing to the back of the ship, four other guards joining him, his heart iced over at what he found.

Five of his men lay dead, sprawled across the wide bottommost deck that jutted off the back of the ship. Strange burn marks marked their chests and their limbs sprawled bonelessly as they stared into the sky, not seeing the black-cloaked figure that stepped right over them.

The assassin was hooded, only strange golden eyes staring out from a face swathed in black, his body broad-shouldered but all other details hidden in the wide billow of his cloak.

He held nothing at all in his gloved hands.

_How did he kill them?_

The intruder moved elegantly as he crossed the deck toward the steps that would bring him to Gadane and the guards: a night-tiger from his people’s folktales come to life in the bright light of day where none should exist. The captain had a flash to his childhood, his long-dead grandmother always whispering about the tigers as the suns set.

“Stop! Stop or I will kill you!”

The man tilted his head, assessing Gadane, yellow gaze burning into him. Clearly unimpressed with what he saw, he did not slow at all, only reaching down toward his hip as he closed the distance between them. The only sound came from behind them, the rest of the ship in a blind panic of running and screaming guests and the distinctive clink of his four guards drawing their blasters.

Gadane whirled his staff and leapt at the assassin, striking out with the heavy stonewood to smash into whatever weapon he was going for. Halfway through the captain’s swing, reality stopped making sense: his staff was now weightless, all of its momentum lost.

Because it was in half. And some horrid red laser _bolt?blast?_ was slicing up through him, carving a canyon of pain through his chest.

He fell to the ground with a painful thud, the last thing he saw his men firing and the night-tiger advancing behind a waving screen of crimson that neatly reflected all of their bolts back at them. They collapsed almost as one, the last line of defense for the royals on board crumbling into jumbled silence.

“Pitiful,” the shadow muttered without stopping, continuing up onto the main deck and toward the control room.

 

* * *

 

Once the pilot had been dealt with and the ship set to autopilot, Maul turned to the real work of the day.

The slaughter of the entire Royal Family of the Hsach system took longer than that of their protectors, to his disgust. At least the soldiers had run to their fate instead of away from it like some of these weaklings, cowering or begging or attempting to bribe him as he stalked them through the halls and balconies of the pleasure barge.

One of the first he’d found was sending a distress call through a secret com panel in the wall of one of the dining rooms. Maul let him finish his message, not knowing the Zabrak stood directly behind him, and cut him down as soon as he’d conveyed the salient points.

He liked a little challenge once in awhile. _Let the countdown start._

_Fifteen minutes, give or take a few, for the authorities to muster their response, the ground tracking system to triangulate us, and the police ships to reach this altitude._

Maul was finished with the rest of the royal family in eight.

Now there was only the Prince and his never-to-be fiancee, huddled together against the furthest end of the barge in a crush of sweet flowers and stained white. The Junior Chancellor stared at him, horrified and looking very little the serene posters of her that hung everywhere on Coruscant.

She was begging the Prince not to fight him. “Please, don’t! He’ll kill you!”

To his credit, Maul idly thought as he spun his lightsaber, the Prince pushed her back and stepped forward despite having no weapon and no hope of winning. “Leave us,” he called out, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “At least leave her.”

The Zabrak stopped on his way down the main aisle to them, his boots crunching to a halt in broken glass. Surrounded by the remains of what had promised to be such a happy day, he seemed to consider this. “You will trade your life for hers?”

A siren rose up somewhere below them, and the Junior Chancellor reached out to weakly tug at the Prince’s sleeve, trying to pull him back to her. “Yes. A woman should never die for a man,” he managed to whimper, hands shaking despite his brave words.

“The Daughter is worth a hundred of you. I reject your offer.” Unnatural gaze bright in the dark of his hood, the yellow somehow stronger than the white banners blowing around him, the assassin took a few long strides to slam his hissing blade up through the Prince’s chest.

The young man gurgled and fell back, gone.

“No!” Padme screamed as the first of the emergency police ships cleared the bow with sirens blaring.

They saw the black shape leaned forward over the terrified girl, the Prince slumping to the ground as the man turned to the Junior Chancellor. “Hurry!” the pilot shouted to the men behind him as he tilted the drop ship toward the deck. “He’s going to kill her!”

The assassin lifted his blade once again, tall and proud and the coming strike as inevitable as death itself. Padme’s hands slid up over her face in a wide-eyed cringe of terror, and only the Zabrak heard her whisper, “Well done, my friend.”

A faint change in the shape of his yellow eyes gave away a quirk of his eyebrow, an unseen smile under the half-mask. Without looking back, he whirled the red saber to deflect a pair of blaster shots and jumped over her head, bounding along the railing with an astounding grace to dive down out of sight onto a lower level.

Pounding boots shook the deck as a few of the police reached her, the others splitting off to go after him. “My lady!” one said, dropping next to her. “Are you all right?”

She shook her head, appearing on the verge of tears.

When she had heard the distinctive sound of the Zabrak’s ship tearing off safely back toward the city below, she buried her face in her hands and cried loudly. No one was able to see the hidden smile that followed.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of a quick two-shot inspired by "The Dark Triumvirate", an AU concept by the wonderful Tumblr user [watson-sighs-and-tuts](http://watson-sighs-and-tuts.tumblr.com/post/146120449584/we-will-take-back-whats-ours-or-how-this-dark). The general idea is shrewd, ends-justify-the-means politician Padme Amidala and everyone's favorite schemer Chancellor Palpatine team up to rule the galaxy with Darth Maul as their behind-the-scenes enforcer. 
> 
> I was intrigued by this idea and thought it'd be fun to play around with, so here we are. :) 
> 
> For those of you wondering, Anakin and Obi-Wan will show up in the second half, which I'll try to get around to sometime in the next couple of weeks. Hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading!


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